John said: “What do you think, Roger?”
“Theoretically, the byways are safer. All the same, I don’t like the look of that road over Masham Moor.” He looked out into the swiftly dusking sky. “Especially by night If we can get through on the main road, it would be a good deal easier.”
“Pirrie?” John asked.
Pirrie shrugged. “As you prefer.”
“We’ll try the main road then. We’ll go round Harrogate. There’s a road through Starbeck and Bilton. We’d better miss Ripon, too, to be on the safe side. I’ll take the lead now, and you can bring up the rear, Roger. Blast on your horn if you find yourself dropping behind for any reason.”
Roger grinned. “I’ll put a bullet through the back of Pirrie’s tin Lizzy as well.”
Pirrie smiled gently. “I shall endeavour not to set too hot a pace for you, Mr Buckley.”
The sky had remained cloudless, and as they drove to the north the stars appeared overhead. But the moon would not be up until after midnight; they drove through a landscape only briefly illuminated by the headlights of the cars. The roads were emptier than any they had met so far. The rumbling military convoys did not reappear; the earth, or tumultuous Leeds, had swallowed them up. Occasionally, in the distance, there were noises that might have been those of guns firing, but they were far away and indeterminate. John’s eye strayed to the left, half expecting to see the sky burst into atomic flame, but nothing happened. Leeds lay there—Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Wakefield, and all the other manufacturing towns and cities of the north Midlands. It was unlikely that they lay in peace, but their agony, whatever it was, could not touch the little convoy speeding towards its refuge.
He was terribly tired, and had to rouse himself by an act of will. The women had been given the duty of keeping their husbands awake at the wheel, but Ann sat in a stiff immobility with her eyes staring into the night, saying nothing, and paying attention to nothing. He fished, one-handed, for the benzedrine pills Roger had given him, and managed to get a drink of water from a bottle to swill them down.
Occasionally, driving uphill, he looked back, to ensure that the lights of the other two cars were still following. Mary lay stretched out on the back seat, covered up with blankets and asleep. Even though brutality used towards the young, by reason of their defencelessness, provoked greater anger and greater pity, it was still true that they were resilient. Was the wind tempered to the shorn lamb? He grimaced. All the lambs were shorn now, and the wind was from the north-east, full of ice and black frost.
They skirted Harrogate and Ripon easily enough; their lights showed that they still had electricity supplies and gave them a comforting civilized look from a distance. Things might not be too bad there yet, either. He wondered: could it all be a bad dream, from which they would awaken to find the old world reborn, that everyday world which already had begun to wear the magic of the irretrievably lost? There will be legends, he thought, of broad avenues celestially lit, of the hurrying millions who lived together without plotting each other’s death, of railway trains and aeroplanes and motor-cars, of food in all its diversity. Most of all, perhaps, of policemen—custodians{106}, without anger or malice, of a law that stretched to the ends of the earth.
He knew Masham as a small market town on the banks of the Ure. The road curved sharply just beyond the river, and he slowed down for the bend.
The block had been well sited—far enough round the bend to be invisible from the other side, but near enough to prevent a car getting up any speed again. The road was not wide enough to permit a turn. He had to brake to stop, and before he could put the car into reverse he found a rifle pointing in at his side window. A stocky man in tweeds was holding it. He said to John:
“All right, then. Come on out.”
John said: “What’s the idea?”
The man stepped back as Pirrie’s Ford swept round in its turn, but he kept the rifle steady on the Vauxhall. There were others, John saw, behind him. They covered the Ford and finally the Citroen when it, too, came to a halt in front of the block.
The man in tweeds said: “What’s this—a convoy? Any more of you?”
He had a jovial Yorkshire voice; the inflection did not seem at all threatening.
John pushed the door open. “We’re travelling west,” he said, “across the moors. My brother’s a farmer in Westmorland. We’re heading for his place.”
“Where are you heading from, mister?” another voice asked.
“ London.”
“You got out quick, did you?” The man laughed. “Not a very ’ealthy place just now, London, I don’t reckon.”
Roger and Pirrie had both alighted—John was relieved to see that they had left their arms in the cars. Roger pointed to the road-block.
“What’s the idea of the tank trap?” he asked. “Getting ready for an invasion?”
The man in tweeds said: “That’s clever.” His voice had a note of approval. “You’ve got it in one. When they come tearing up from the West Riding, the way you’ve done, they’re not going to find it so easy to pillage this little town.”
“I get your point,” Roger said.
There was something artificial about the situation. John was able to see more clearly now; there were more than a dozen men in the road, watching them.
He said: “We might as well get things straight. Do I take it you want us to back-track and find a road round the town? It’s a nuisance, but I see your point.”
Another of the men laughed. “Not yet you don’t, mister!”
John made no reply. For a moment he weighed the possibilities of their getting back into the cars and fighting it out But even if they were to succeed in getting back, the women and children would be in the line of fire. He waited.
It was fairly clear that the man in tweeds was the leader. One of the small Napoleons the new chaos would throw up; it was their bad luck that Masham had thrown him up so promptly. It had not been unreasonable to hope for another twelve hours’ grace.
“You see,” the man in tweeds said, “you’ve got to look at it from our point of view. If we didn’t protect ourselves, a place like this would be buried in the first rush. I’m telling you so you will understand we’re not doing anything that’s not sensible and necessary. You see, as well as being a target, you might say we’re a honeypot All the flies—trying to get away from the famine and the atom bombs—they’ll all be travelling along the main roads. We catch them, and then we live on them—that’s the idea.”
“Bit early for cannibalism,” Roger commented. “Or is it a habit to eat human flesh in these parts?”
The man in tweeds laughed. “Glad to see you’ve got a sense of humour. All’s not lost while we can find something to laugh at, eh? It’s not their flesh we want—not yet, anyway. But most of ’em will be carrying something, if it’s only half a bar of chocolate. You might say this is a toll-gate{107} combined with a customs house{108}. We inspect the luggage, and take what we want.”
John said sharply: “Do you let us through after that?”
“Well, not through, like. But round, anyway.” His eyes—small and intent in a square well-fleshed face—fastened on John’s. “You can see what it looks like from our point of view, can’t you?”
“I should say it looks like theft,” John said, “from any point of view.”
“Ay,” the man said, “maybe as it does. If you’ve travelled all the way up here from London with nought worse than theft to your names, you’ve been luckier than the next lot will be. All right, mister. Ask the women to bring the kids out We’ll do the searching. Come on, now. Soonest out, soonest ended.”